Smallpox was for several centuries one of the most deadly, most contagious, and most feared of diseases. This book charts the history of one of the most controversial techniques in medical history. Originating probably in Africa, smallpox progressed via the Middle and Near East, where it was studied around the end of the first millennium by Arab physicians. It arrived in Britain during Elizabethan times and was well established by the seventeenth century. During the closing years of the eighteenth century, a far-reaching and ultimately controversial development took place when Edward Jenner de ... More

Smallpox was for several centuries one of the most deadly, most contagious, and most feared of diseases. This book charts the history of one of the most controversial techniques in medical history. Originating probably in Africa, smallpox progressed via the Middle and Near East, where it was studied around the end of the first millennium by Arab physicians. It arrived in Britain during Elizabethan times and was well established by the seventeenth century. During the closing years of the eighteenth century, a far-reaching and ultimately controversial development took place when Edward Jenner developed an inoculation for Smallpox based on a culture from Cowpox. The author examines the astonishing speed at which Jenner's technique of ‘vaccination’ was taken up, culminating in the ‘Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853’. The Act made a painful and sometimes fatal medical practice for all children obligatory and as a result set an important precedent for governmental regulation of medical welfare. It remained in force until 1946 and was only ended after decades of intense pressure from the National Anti-vaccination League, but the issues raised by this book remain current today in debates about vaccination. The book highlights the social, political, and ethical consequences of compulsory vaccination and the repercussions that followed the ending of the policy through the most major medical resistance campaign in European medical history.